Harshest Quotes

As if Spade's chivalry would allow him to do anything to a woman. The harshest punishment she could imagine him dishing out to Cat would be refusing to open a door for her.

Even some of Bill and Hillary’s harshest political critics admire their success as parents.

their relationship was built on friendship, and in matters of friendship he was boundlessly loyal. It was a relationship that would survive the harshest test.

...Death was oblivion; life was reality, the harshest truth that had ever existed

My memories of him, though few, are mostly pleasant, but memories of people you hardly know are often permitted a kind of pleasantness in their absence. It's those who stay who are judged the harshest, simply by virtue of being around to be judged.

At the age of five she has already come to terms with one of the life's harshest lessons: that the world isn't fair.

Love.” The word floated between us on a soft gust of air. “Deep, abiding, unconditional love. You want it so much you’re willing to live for it.” Most people thought the biggest sacrifice they could make was to die for something. They were wrong. The biggest sacrifice someone could make was to live for something—to allow it to consume you and turn you into a version of yourself you didn’t recognize. Death was oblivion; life was reality, the harshest truth that had ever existed.

A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men's loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them...A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.

Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring--this is one of the harshest human miseries.

The beauty that withstands all. Stubborn in the harshest of atmospheres.

Memory is a mean thing, slicing at you from the harshest angles, dipping your consciousness into the wrong colors again and again. A moment of humiliation, or devastation, or absolute rage, to be rewound and replayed, spinning a thread that wraps around the brain, knotting itself into something of a noose. It won't exactly kill you, but it makes you feel the squeeze of every horrible moment. How do you stop it? How do you work the mind free?

Your teachers Are all around you. All that you perceive, All that you experience, All that is given to you or taken from you, All that you love or hate, need or fear Will teach you-- If you will learn. God is your first and your last teacher. God is your harshest teacher: subtle, demanding. Learn or die.

..in the harshest days of leaf-bare clanmate turns upon clanmate danger lurks behind familiar faces and one more warrior may be lost forever

Most people thought the biggest sacrifice they could make was to die for something. They were wrong. The biggest sacrifice someone could make was to live for something—to allow it to consume you and turn you into a version of yourself you didn’t recognize. Death was oblivion; life was reality, the harshest truth that had ever existed.

People that criticize the harshest usually are the ones who would trade places the fastest

Life is messy, Ren. It's not easy and it's definitely not for the timid. Everyone has a past. Things that stab them right between the eyes. Old grudges. Old shame. Regrets that steal your sleep and leave you awake until you fear for your own sanity. Betrayals that make your soul scream so loud you wonder why no one else hears it. In the end, we are all alone in that private hell. But life isn't about learning to forgive those who have hurt you or forgetting the past. It's about learning to forgive yourself for being human and making mistakes. Yes, people disappoint us all the time. But the harshest lessons come when we disappoint ourselves. When we put our trust and our hearts into the hands of the wrong person and they do us wrong. And while we may hate them for what they did, the one we hate most is ourself for allowing them into our private circle. How could I have been so stupid? How could I let them deceive me? We all go through that. It's humanity's brotherhood of misery.

I'm my best and harshest critic. I know what's good and what isn't.

They say the truest beauty is in the harshest land and that God can be found there by those with open eyes.

The best incentive for an artist are the harshest criticism

She has already come to terms with one of life's harshest lessons: that the world isn't fair.

The last time you were feeling heartbroken, you took shots at a chandelier with a mundane gun and nearly drowned yourself in the Serpentine.” said Matthew. “I wasn’t trying to drown myself,” James pointed out. “Besides, Magnus Bane saved me.” “Don’t mention that,” said Matthew, as James uncapped the flask. “You know how angry I am about that. I idolize Magnus Bane, you had one chance to meet him, and you embarrassed us all.” “I’m quite sure I never mentioned any of you to him,” said James, and tipped the flask back. He choked. It was blue ruin: the cheapest, harshest kind of gin. It went down like lightning. He coughed and thrust the flask away. “Even worse,” said Matthew. “How sharper than the serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful parabatai.

Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common with novel-writers, of degrading, by their contemptuous censure, the very performances to the number of which they are themselves adding; joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronised by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another- we are an injured body.

Originally, he'd wanted to focus his work on the convict leasing system that had stolen years off of his great-grandpa H's life, but the deeper into the research he got, the bigger the project got. How could he talk about Great-Grandpa H's story without also talking about his grandma Willie and the millions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow? And if he mentioned the Great Migration, he'd have to talk about the cities that took that flock in. He'd have to talk about Harlem, And how could he talk about Harlem without mentioning his father's heroin addiction - the stints in prison, the criminal record? And if he was going to talk about heroin in Harlem in the '60s, wouldn't he also have to talk about crack everywhere in the '80s? And if he wrote about crack, he'd inevitably be writing, to, about the "war on drugs." And if he started talking about the war on drugs, he'd be talking about how nearly half of the black men he grew up with were on their way either into or out of what had become the harshest prison system in the world. And if he talked about why friends from his hood were doing five-year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he'd gone to college with smoked it openly every day, he'd get so angry that he'd slam the research book on the table of the beautiful but deadly silent Lane Reading Room of Green Library of Stanford University. And if he slammed the book down, then everyone in the room would stare and all they would see would be his skin and his anger, and they'd think they knew something about him, and it would be the same something that had justified putting his great-grandpa H in prison, only it would be different too, less obvious than it once was.

Fear was a wicked monster clinging to every insecurity, whispering the harshest things. And salvation could also be dirty.

I suppose the true test of character comes when facing life’s harshest blows and disappointments. When things don’t turn out how you had hoped they would, do you grow bitter? Spiteful? Blame others and spread your misery? Or do you keep your head high and walk with grace, meeting the struggles which God has placed in your path?

The harshest people I’ve met over the years have had two things in common: they don’t fully trust anybody, and they view relationships as a means to an end.

Even the bleakest, cruelest soul can have its tender spots. Even the harshest desert has its pools, its shady trees and gentle streams.

We are always harshest upon those foibles we see in others that we know bedevil our own natures - the ones that most gravely misbecome our self image - for blame is always easier than shame.

The wicked have weakness other than their willingness to kill and maim. Even the bleakest, cruelest soul can have its tender spots. Even the harshest desert has its pools, its shady trees and gentle streams.

Acceptance, she thinks, is the harshest lesson life teaches and the one most important to learn.

He [Zampano] probably would of insisted on corrections and edits, he was his own harshest critic, but I've come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angels of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.

He smelled of cold. Like ice and snow on the harshest days of winter.

Only the harshest personal experiences open our eyes to the immaculate possibilities and the splendor of our world.

And, I think, this greening does thaw at the edges, at least, of my own cold season. Joy sneaks in: listening to music, riding my bicycle, I catch myself feeling, in a way that’s as old as I am but suddenly seems unfamiliar, light. I have felt so heavy for so long. At first I felt odd- as if I shouldn’t be feeling this lightness, that familiar little catch of pleasure in the heart which is inexplicable, though a lovely passage of notes or the splendidly turned petal of a tulip has triggered it. It’s my buoyancy, part of what keeps me alive: happy, suddenly with the concomitant experience of a sonata and the motion of the shadows of leaves. I have the desire to be filled with sunlight, to soak my skin in as much of it as I can drink up, after the long interior darkness of this past season, the indoor vigil, in this harshest and darkest of winters, outside and in.

(90 percent of communication occurs using just 500 words), among many other things. Sometimes it is known as the Matthew Principle (Matthew 25:29), derived from what might be the harshest statement ever attributed to Christ: “to those who have everything, more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken.

the bleakest situations bring out the hospitality in all of us, but it's during the harshest we find out how strong we really are.

Grandfather always said that stories are the heartbeat of the world, especially in Alaska. Stories shape us. They give meaning to the harshest winters and the longest summers.

Remember, the person in the mirror is your harshest critic.

The world falls away, and we are no longer a prince and his harshest critic, but two flawed human beings needing to be understood.

We are often our own harshest critics

It is no accident that in all major religions the most rigidly fundamentalist elements take the harshest, most punitive line against addicted people. Could it be that they see their own weakness and fear—and false attachments—reflected in the dark mirror addiction holds up to them?

The harshest criticism, I noticed, often seemed to come from other women. I didn't want to be that kind of woman, I decided; it wasn't right to hurt others in a way I'd been hurt. From then on, I vowed, I would never say anything negative about a woman's appearance. It had nothing to do with them as a person, and it wasn't something they could easily change. If I didn't want looks to matter, I would have to stop talking and acting like they did.

Have you never known a cruel wind? What an easy, balmy, tropical life you must have! I never tease, madam! I coax, I beguile, I stomp, I throw tantrums, and for certain, I freeze — I am the Coldest and Harshest of all the Harsh Airs! I am the shiver of the world! But I do not tease. You can cause ever so much more trouble by taking folk seriously, asking just what they're doing and doing just what they ask.

Silence!” Korbolo snapped. He eyed Duiker. “You are the historian who rode with Coltaine.” The historian faced him. “I am.” “You are a soldier.” “As you say.” “I do, and so you shall die with these soldiers, in a manner no different-“ “You mean to slaughter ten thousand unarmed men and women, Korbolo Dom?” “I mean to cripple Tavore before she even sets foot on this continent. I mean to make her too furious to think. I mean to crack that façade so she dreams of vengeance day and night, poisoning her every decision.” “You always fashioned yourself as the Empire’s harshest Fist, didn’t you, Korbolo Dom? As if cruelty’s a virtue…

Once you grow, you'll understand that this twisted world doesn't run so smoothly. In order to beat the injustice, one must either apply the harshest methods sometimes or get squashed under the boots of the strong forces. It is the wild law of the world, unfortunately.

[Adapted and condensed Valedictorian speech:] I'm going to ask that you seriously consider modeling your life, not in the manner of the Dalai Lama or Jesus - though I'm sure they're helpful - but something a bit more hands-on, Carassius auratus auratus, commonly known as the domestic goldfish. People make fun of the goldfish. People don't think twice about swallowing it. Jonas Ornata III, Princeton class of '42, appears in the Guinness Book of World Records for swallowing the greatest number of goldfish in a fifteen-minute interval, a cruel total of thirty-nine. In his defense, though, I don't think Jonas understood the glory of the goldfish, that they have magnificent lessons to teach us. If you live like a goldfish, you can survive the harshest, most thwarting of circumstances. You can live through hardships that make your cohorts - the guppy, the neon tetra - go belly-up at the first sign of trouble. There was an infamous incident described in a journal published by the Goldfish Society of America - a sadistic five-year-old girl threw hers to the carpet, stepped on it, not once but twice - luckily she'd done it on a shag carpet and thus her heel didn't quite come down fully on the fish. After thirty harrowing seconds she tossed it back into its tank. It went on to live another forty-seven years. They can live in ice-covered ponds in the dead of winter. Bowls that haven't seen soap in a year. And they don't die from neglect, not immediately. They hold on for three, sometimes four months if they're abandoned. If you live like a goldfish, you adapt, not across hundreds of thousands of years like most species, having to go through the red tape of natural selection, but within mere months, weeks even. You give them a little tank? They give you a little body. Big tank? Big body. Indoor. Outdoor. Fish tanks, bowls. Cloudy water, clear water. Social or alone. The most incredible thing about goldfish, however, is their memory. Everyone pities them for only remembering their last three seconds, but in fact, to be so forcibly tied to the present - it's a gift. They are free. No moping over missteps, slip-ups, faux pas or disturbing childhoods. No inner demons. Their closets are light filled and skeleton free. And what could be more exhilarating than seeing the world for the very first time, in all of its beauty, almost thirty thousand times a day? How glorious to know that your Golden Age wasn't forty years ago when you still had all you hair, but only three seconds ago, and thus, very possibly it's still going on, this very moment." I counted three Mississippis in my head, though I might have rushed it, being nervous. "And this moment, too." Another three seconds. "And this moment, too." Another. "And this moment, too.

It's a strange business, speaking for yourself , in your own name, because it doesn't at all come with seeing yourself as an ego or a person or a subject. Individuals find a real name for themselves, rather, only through the harshest exercise in depersonalization, by opening themselves up to the multiplicities everywhere within them, to the intensities running through them.

Science, the discipline in which we should find the harshest scepticism, the most pin-sharp rationality and the hardest-headed empiricism, has become home to a dizzying array of incompetence, delusion, lies and self-deception.

That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis. If the Jews were unholy, then killing and looting them was holy work.

love is not an emotion; it’s a policy and a commitment that we choose to keep in the harshest of circumstances. It’s something that can be learned and that we can grow in. Biblical love is not based on the worthiness of the person being loved—none of us deserves Christ’s sacrifice—but on the worthiness of the One who calls us to love: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

environmental determinism. According to this theory, even if some early humans eked out an existence in the harshest conditions on the planet, they rarely advanced beyond a few primitive tribes. Society, in other words, is a captive of geography.

the black church helped African Americans survive the harshest forms of oppression and developed a revolutionary appeal for universal communal spirituality. The black church didn’t just theorize about democracy, it practiced democracy. From its roots there flowered the civil rights movement — creative, inclusive, and nonviolent.

As once the winged energy of delight carried you over childhood's dark abysses, now beyond your own life build the great arch of unimagined bridges. Wonders happen if we can succeed in passing through the harshest danger; but only in a bright and purely granted achievement can we realize the wonder. To work with Things in the indescribable relationship is not too hard for us; the pattern grows more intricate and subtle, and being swept along is not enough. Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between two contradictions...For the god wants to know himself in you.

O she bad. She thrives in harshest situations. She has mastered the art of positive thinking. She sets boundaries you wouldn't dare to cross. She knows if she can build she can destroy. O She's the baddest. Sis, take a look in the mirror. She is you.

Is it always in the interest of the public safety to seek the prosecutor's traditional solution -- the harshest penalty possible? Or is the public best served by finding ways to change a kid's lot in life for the better, even if that means opening the prison door?

I love you beyond reason, with all the persistence of revenge and all the violence of hate. I love you with the bones beneath my flesh and the blood in my veins. I love you into the deepest dark and under the harshest light. Let me be your Forever. You are already mine.

no amount of money in the world can make up for parental absence. It’s one of life’s harshest realities.

Looking at her was like stepping into a patch of spring sunlight after the harshest winter.

And violent hearts set harshest flame,” Roque murmurs from his knee.

It’s those who stay who are judged the harshest, simply by virtue of being around to be judged.

Friendship here is like a flower that blooms in the desert; it blossoms from the harshest environment to add something special to the lives it touches.

suspect it will be the harshest tyranny imaginable; majority rule gives the ruthless strong man plenty of elbow room to oppress his fellows.

This is one of the harshest after effects of the pandemicthat I am witnessing someand experiencing some,a diminished ability to deal with resistance,and soa willingness to stay in one place for too long,shut off from the outside world,nose in phone or binge-watchingsome showwhen once upon a timewe used to have to wait a week for the next installmentand discussed it with colleagues over water coolersand over landlines with friends. We need colleagues.We need friends.

It is the mind that creates our wealth, and this goes with us into exile, and in the harshest desert places it finds sufficient to nourish the body and revels in the enjoyment of its own goods.

This is one of the harshest after effects of the pandemic that I am witnessing some and experiencing some, a diminished ability to deal with resistance, and so a willingness to stay in one place for too long, shut off from the outside world, nose in phone or binge-watching some show when once upon a time we used to have to wait a week for the next installment and discussed it with colleagues over water coolers and over landlines with friends. We need colleagues. We need friends.

The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distress. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public. This is a natural consequence of what has been said before. Between the workman and the master there are frequent relations, but no real association. I am of the opinion, on the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest that ever existed in the world; but at the same time it is one of the most confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless, the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction; for if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrates into the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which they will enter.

Jesus reserved his harshest judgement for those who professed to be righteous but failed to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, visit the sick and imprisoned. “Depart from me, you accursed!” he thundered.

Matthew Principle (Matthew 25:29), derived from what might be the harshest statement ever attributed to Christ: “to those who have everything, more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken.

At the moment when the road looks the harshest, and you think you cannot continue on that is when you relearn your first mode of transportation; you crawl. You dig your fingers into the dirt, and propel yourself forward with your toes, but you never give up. You've gotta learn to bend with the sway. You never know what is around the next curve.

and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel–writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding — joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine–hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel–reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that I often read novels — It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss — ?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best–chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.

I have for some days held and controlled every avenue by which the people and garrison of Savannah can be supplied, and I am therefore justified in demanding the surrender of the city…I am prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison; but should I be forced to resort to assault, or the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army—burning to avenge the national wrong which they attach to Savannah and other large cities which have been so prominent in dragging our country into civil war.

When I got to school the next morning I had stepped only one foot in the quad when he spotted me and nearly tackled me to the ground. “Jamie!” he hollered, rushing across the lawn without caring the least bit about the scene he was creating. The next thing I knew, my feet were off the ground and I was squished so tightly in Ryan’s arms that I could barely breathe. “Okay, Ryan?” I coughed in a hushed tone. “This is exactly the kind of thing that can get you killed.” “I don’t care, I’m not letting go. Don’t ever disappear like that again!” he scolded, but his voice was more relieved than angry. “It’s been days! You had your mother worried sick!” “My mother?” I questioned sarcastically. Ryan laughed as he finally set me back on my feet. “Okay, fine, me too.” He still wouldn’t let go of me, though. He was gripping my arms while he looked at me with those eyes, and that smile… You know, being all Ryan-ish. And then, when I got lost in the moment, he totally took advantage of how whipped I was and he kissed me. The jerk. He just pulled my face to his right then and there, in the middle of a crowded quad full of students, where I could have accidentally unleashed an electrical storm at any moment. And okay, maybe I liked it, and maybe I even needed it, but still! You can’t just go kissing Jamie Baker whenever you want, even if you are Ryan Miller! “Ryan!” I yelled as soon as I was able to pull away from him—which admittedly took a minute. “I’m sorry.” Ryan laughed with this big dopey grin on his face and then kissed me some more. I had to push him away from me. “Don’t be sorry, just stop!” I realized I was screaming at him when I felt a hundred different pairs of eyes on me. I tried to ignore the audience that Ryan seemed oblivious to and dropped the audio a few decibels. “I wasn’t kidding when I said this has to stop. Look, I will be your friend. I want to be your friend. But that’s it. We can’t be anything more. It’ll never work.” Ryan watched me for a minute and then whispered, “Don’t do that.” I was shocked to hear the sudden emotion in his voice. “Don’t give up.” It was hopeless. “Fine!” I snapped. “I’ll be your stupid girlfriend!” Big shocker, me giving Ryan his way, I know. But let’s face it—it’s just what I do best. I had to at least act a little tough, though. “But!” I said in the harshest voice I was capable of. “You can’t ever touch me unless I say. No more tackling me, and especially no more surprise kissing.” He actually laughed at my request. “No promises.” Stupid, cocky boyfriend. “You’re crazy. You know that, right?” Ryan got this big cheesy smile on his face and said, “Crazy about you.” “Ugh,” I groaned. “Would you be serious for a minute? Why do you insist on putting your life in danger?” “Because I like you.” His stupid grin was infectious. I wanted to be angry, but how could I with him looking at me like that? “I’m not worth it, you know,” I said stubbornly. “I have issues. I’m unstable.” “You’re cute when you’re unstable,” Ryan said, “and I like your issues.” The stupid boy was straight-up giddy now. But he was so cute that I cracked a smile despite myself. “You really are crazy,” I muttered.

I truly believe that a woman with a strong personality has the most compassionate heart whose faith in God never wavered even through the harshest challenges in life because when God is on her side, no one can stop her, when God is her strength, no one can break her, when God is her love, she loves others for His sake until she discovers the joy of loving, giving and living for every joy that passes, something beautiful remains.

Your teachers Are all around you. All that you perceive, All that you experience, All that is given to you or taken from you, All that you love or hate, need or fear Will teach you— If you will learn. God is your first and your last teacher. God is your harshest teacher: subtle, demanding. Learn or die.

Dark African Americans receive the harshest prison sentences and more time behind bars. White male offenders with African facial features receive harsher sentences than their all-European peers. Dark female students are nearly twice as likely to be suspended as White female students, while researchers found no disparity between Light and White female students. Inequities between Light and Dark African Americans can be as wide as inequities between Black and White Americans.

#quote In the harshest conditions is when we know better the people around us. En las condiciones más duras es cuando conocemos mejor a las personas que nos rodean.

Everything can be expressed so long as it's presented properly. Even the harshest reprimand can be made without humiliating or poisoning the soul.

A buttercup is a wild yellow flower that is as beautiful as it is delicate, and can adapt and flourish in the harshest

But as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., once said, “Righteousness is easy, also cheap, in retrospect.” When we condemn posterity for slavery, or for Native American removal, or for denying women their full role in the life of the nation, we ought to pause and think: What injustices are we perpetuating even now that will one day face the harshest of verdicts by those who come after us?

The boundaries are not to be blurred. I was sent off, struck by his harshest thunderbolt, excommunication. In his eyes I am no longer a man of the cloth. But I yet feel the Lord's hand holding me up.

The harshest daylight, rationality at any cost, life bright, cold, circumspect, conscious, without instinct, in opposition to the instincts, has itself been no more than a form of sickness, another form of sickness – and by no means a way back to ‘virtue’, to ‘health’, to happiness…. To have to combat one’s instincts – that is the formula for décadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one. –

Betrayals that make your soul scream so loud you wonder why no one else hears it. In the end, we are all alone in that private hell. But life isn't about learning to forgive those who have hurt you or forgetting the past. It's about learning to forgive yourself for being human and making mistakes. Yes, people disappoint us all the time. But the harshest lessons come when we disappoint ourselves. When we put our trust and our hearts into the hands of the wrong person and they do us wrong. And while we may hate them for what they did, the one we hate most is ourself for allowing them into our private circle. How could I have been so stupid? How could I let them deceive me?

I’ve never been ashamed of my struggles, my breakdowns nor those moments where I felt the most chaotic, so damn unbalanced or anxious about all those things that have eaten me alive. I’ve never played the role of a victim because such a silly role has never been mine. on the contrary , I’ve always been my worst judge, my harshest critic, and if I have ever been a victim , I was the victim of my stupid decisions and my wrong choices of toxic people , environment that I’ll never belong to and paths that led me nowhere . I owe the world no apologies, all the apologies I really owe to myself for being so hard on myself in a world that has never made it any better nor showed any mercy on me …

Somethings wont make sense, no matter how you view it, no matter the years that have passed, no matter the experiences that have shaped you and with certainty you will lose your mind trying to understand it. Those chapters are the ones we never read out loud, proof that monsters do exist, the villians disguised as angels with broken wings. The ones who have come to awaken the souls core, handing out more nightmares then daydreams. But please know this, if it hurt so deeply, its because it mattered and when something matters it changes you. For better or worse, life will always go on, with or without you - thats the harshest truth there is, and time my dear, will cure all open wounds but only death will heal some deep scars.

Kindness begins with us. When we are kind to ourselves, we fulfil, honour and nourish ourselves. We may be in the habit of berating and criticising ourselves for our perceived shortcomings, constantly second-guessing ourselves, putting our own needs last or allowing ourselves the time, space and patience we deeply need to rest, heal and feel content. We may be our own harshest critics, finding it second nature to criticise ourselves yet very challenging to praise and comfort ourselves.

A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men’s loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him.

What do I want?” "Love... Deep, abiding, unconditional love. You want it so much you’re willing to live for it.” Most people thought the biggest sacrifice they could make was to die for something. They were wrong. The biggest sacrifice someone could make was to live for something—to allow it to consume you and turn you into a version of yourself you didn’t recognize. Death was oblivion; life was reality, the harshest truth that had ever existed. “You want it so much you’d say yes to anything. Believe in anyone. One more favor, one more kind gesture…and maybe, just maybe, they’ll give you the love you want so desperately...

The length of sentences depends upon the criminal’s wealth and type of legal help more than upon the seriousness of his transgression. Court procedures are slow and cumbersome. It is the poor and stupid criminal who gets the heaviest sentences - so the aim of criminals is to become rich and cunning, and thus avoid the harshest penalties.

We try so hard to make these little time capsules. Memories string up just so, like holiday lights, casting the perfect glow in the left tones. But picking and choosing what to look at, what to put on display- that's not the true nature of remembering. Memory is a mean thing, slicing at you from the harshest angles, dipping your consciousness into the wrong colors again and again. A moment of humiliation, or devastation, or absolute rage, to be rewound and replayed, spinning a thread that wraps around the brain, knotting itself into something of a noose. It won't exactly kill you, but it makes you feel the squeeze of every horrible moment. How do you stop it? How do you work the mind free?

But you ˹Israelites˺ turned away—except for a few of you—and were indifferent. 84. And ˹remember˺ when We took your covenant that you would neither shed each other’s blood nor expel each other from their homes, you gave your pledge and bore witness. 85. But here you are, killing each other and expelling some of your people from their homes, aiding one another in sin and aggression; and when those ˹expelled˺ come to you as captives, you still ransom them—though expelling them was unlawful for you.28 Do you believe in some of the Scripture and reject the rest? Is there any reward for those who do so among you other than disgrace in this worldly life and being subjected to the harshest punishment on the Day of Judgment? For God is never unaware of what you do.

In this world, as in our own, nearly all the chief means of production, nearly all the land, mines, factories, railways, ships, were controlled for private profit by a small minority of the population. These privileged individuals were able to force the masses to work for them on pain of starvation. The tragic farce inherent in such a system was already approaching. The owners directed the energy of the workers increasingly towards the production of more means of production rather than to the fulfilment of the needs of individual life. For machinery might bring profit to the owners; bread would not. With the increasing competition of machine with machine, profits declined, and therefore wages, and therefore effective demand for goods. Marketless products were destroyed, though bellies were unfed and backs unclad. Unemployment, disorder, and stern repression increased as the economic system disintegrated. A familiar story! As conditions deteriorated, and the movements of charity and state-charity became less and less able to cope with the increasing mass of unemployment and destitution, the new pariah-race became more and more psychologically useful to the hate-needs of the sacred, but still powerful, prosperous. The theory was spread that these wretched beings were the result of secret systematic race-pollution by riff-raff immigrants, and that they deserved no consideration whatever. They were therefore allowed only the basest forms of employment and the harshest conditions of work. When unemployment had become a serious social problem, practically the whole pariah stock was workless and destitute. It was of course easily believed that unemployment, far from being due to the decline of capitalism, was due to the worthlessness of the pariahs.

And now it’s really over. I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want! I know I can write. A few of my stories are good, my descriptions of the Secret Annex are humorous, much of my diary is vivid and alive, but … it remains to be seen whether I really have talent. “Eva’s Dream” is my best fairy tale, and the odd thing is that I don’t have the faintest idea where it came from. Parts of “Cady’s Life” are also good, but as a whole it’s nothing special. I’m my best and harshest critic. I know what’s good and what isn’t. Unless you write yourself, you can’t know how wonderful it is; I always used to bemoan the fact that I couldn’t draw, but now I’m overjoyed that at least I can write. And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can’t imagine having to live like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer? I hope so, oh, I hope so very much, because writing allows me to record everything, all my thoughts, ideals and fantasies. I haven’t worked on “Cady’s Life” for ages. In my mind I’ve worked out exactly what happens next, but the story doesn’t seem to be coming along very well. I might never finish it, and it’ll wind up in the wastepaper basket or the stove. That’s a horrible thought, but then I say to myself, “At the age of fourteen and with so little experience, you can’t write about philosophy.” So onward and upward, with renewed spirits. It’ll all work out, because I’m determined to write!

But life isn’t about learning to forgive those who have hurt you or forgetting your past. It’s about learning to forgive yourself for being human and making mistakes. Yes, people disappoint us all the time. But the harshest lessons come when we disappoint ourselves. When we put our trust and our hearts into the hands of the wrong person and they do us wrong. And while we may hate them for what they did, the one we hate most is ourself for allowing them into our private circle.

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather." He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it." I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive." "Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile." "I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall." He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?" "Isn't that life?" He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?" "Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily fed while her children sit back and watch. Where a father is murdered bacause he made the mistake of wanting a van for his family. In that world, it seems like it's raining all the time. A cold, hard rain that seeps into clothes, chills bones, and makes people feel utterly wretched. Many times, I see people on the worst day of their lives, when they feel like they're drowing. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I just know that if they make good choices, and accept the right help, they'll come out of it all the stronger for it. What I do enjoy comes after. Three months later, when I see that thirteen-year-old former prostitute pushing a mower across the front lawn of her foster home, a quiet smile on her face. Eight months later, when I see the girl who was raped walking home from school with a guy who wants nothing from her but to make her laugh. Two years later, when I see the junkie mom clean and sober and loading a shopping cart for the kids that the State finally gave back to her. Those people have seen the sun again after the harshest rain, and they appreciate it so much more.

But life isn’t about learning to forgive those who have hurt you or forgetting your past. It’s about learning to forgive yourself for being human and making mistakes. Yes, people disappoint us all the time. But the harshest lessons come when we disappoint ourselves. When we put our trust and our hearts into the hands of the wrong person and they do us wrong. And while we may hate them for what they did, the one we hate most is ourself for allowing them into our private circle. How could I have been so stupid? How could I let them deceive me? We all go through that. It’s humanity’s Brotherhood of Misery.

A month passed, and it was time again for Marcus to return to his research. He had been avoiding it because it wasn’t going well. Originally, he’d wanted to focus his work on the convict leasing system that had stolen years off of his great-grandpa H’s life, but the deeper into the research he got, the bigger the project got. How could he talk about Great-Grandpa H’s story without also talking about his grandma Willie and the millions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow? And if he mentioned the Great Migration, he’d have to talk about the cities that took that flock in. He’d have to talk about Harlem. And how could he talk about Harlem without mentioning his father’s heroin addiction—the stints in prison, the criminal record? And if he was going to talk about heroin in Harlem in the ’60s, wouldn’t he also have to talk about crack everywhere in the ’80s? And if he wrote about crack, he’d inevitably be writing, too, about the “war on drugs.” And if he started talking about the war on drugs, he’d be talking about how nearly half of the black men he grew up with were on their way either into or out of what had become the harshest prison system in the world. And if he talked about why friends from his hood were doing five-year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he’d gone to college with smoked it openly every day, he’d get so angry that he’d slam the research book on the table of the beautiful but deadly silent Lane Reading Room of Green Library of Stanford University. And if he slammed the book down, then everyone in the room would stare and all they would see would be his skin and his anger, and they’d think they knew something about him, and it would be the same something that had justified putting his great-grandpa H in prison, only it would be different too, less obvious than it once was.

But then I don’t begin to understand a lot of things about Sweden and Norway. It’s as if they are determined to squeeze all the pleasure out of life. They have the highest income-tax rates, the highest VAT rates, the harshest drinking laws, the dreariest bars, the dullest restaurants, and television that’s like two weeks in Nebraska. Everything costs a fortune. Even the purchase of a bar of chocolate leaves you staring in dismay at your change, and anything larger than that brings tears of pain to your eyes. It’s bone-crackingly cold in the winter and it does nothing but rain the rest of the year. The most fun thing to do in these countries is walk around semi-darkened shopping centers after they have closed, looking in the windows of stores selling wheelbarrows and plastic garden furniture at prices no one can afford. On top of that, they have shackled themselves with some of the most inane and restrictive laws imaginable, laws that leave you wondering what on earth they were thinking about. In Norway, for instance, it is illegal for a barman to serve you a fresh drink until you have finished the previous one. Does that sound to you like a matter that needs to be covered by legislation? It is also illegal in Norway for a bakery to bake bread on a Saturday or Sunday. Well, thank God for that, say I. Think of the consequences if some ruthless Norwegian baker tried to foist fresh bread on people at the weekend. But the most preposterous law of all, a law so pointless as to scamper along the outer margins of the surreal, is the Swedish one that requires motorists to drive with their headlights on during the daytime, even on the sunniest summer afternoon. I would love to meet the guy who thought up that one. He must be head of the Department of Dreariness. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if on my next visit to Sweden all the pedestrians are wearing miners’ lamps.

The suggestion that the Alf Yeom is the work of jinn is surely a curious one. The Quran speaks of the hidden people in the most candid way, yet more and more the educated faithful will not admit to believing in them, however readily they might accept even the harshest and most obscure points of Islamic law. That God has ordained that a thief must pay for his crime with his hand, that a woman must inherit half of what a man inherits-these things are treated not only as facts, but as obvious facts, whereas the existence of conscious beings we cannot see-and all the fantastic and wondrous things that their existence suggests and makes possible-produces profound discomfort among precisely that cohort of Muslims most lauded for their role in that religious "renaissance" presently expected by western observers: young degree-holding traditionalists. Yet how hollow rings a tradition in which the law, which is subject to interpretation, is held as sacrosanct, yet the word of God is not to be trusted when it comes to His description of what He has created. I do not know what I believe.

Amani knew Baz’s fatwa by heart, about women being forbidden from driving, and she proudly quoted, “Depravity leads to the innocent and pure women being accused of indecencies. Allah has laid down one of the harshest punishments for such an act to protect society from the spreading of the causes of depravity. Women driving cars, however, is one of the causes that lead to that.” Now Maha was dancing around the room, singing her words in a loud voice: “I am free, Amani, while you willingly wear chains!” She leapt into the air like a ballerina, holding her driving license like a trophy. My daughter is really too dramatic. Maha continued her rant. “I am free! My sister wears chains!” “Everything you do is haram, Maha,” Amani announced self-importantly, with the greatest certainty. “Listen, Amani. You are in the dark ages. You could be smart, but you seek ignorance and you appear to like portraying weakness and ignorance, to have men making all your decisions, when you are fully capable.” Maha was smothering. “I am free, Amani, to live. I am free to think for myself. I am free to drive. I am free to have thoughts about anything I please. I am a woman freed from this madness you embrace so lovingly!

Evolution is largely a temporal phenomenon, Merrill. The environment changes, and populations in that environment change in turn, or they languish. Individual organisms don't evolve; populations do. Nature doesn't give a damn about individuals. The only role we play in evolution is surviving long enough to give birth to offspring who are slightly different from us. Some of our offspring will prosper in a changing environment, and some of them will not. As for us individuals, once we've reproduced, nature has no more use for us. We perish along with our ill-adapted young. Death has always been an essential factor in species survival. Now consider the human race. We are a partial exception to the rule. Unlike other species, we have developed culture. Instead of adapting to a changing environment biologically, we can sometimes adapt to it culturally. If an Ice Age comes along, we don't need to grow fur on our bodies if we invent the fur coat. Culture allows us to adapt to almost any environment, including the harshest, like space. In fact, our cultural adaptation is so robust that it all but obviates the need to evolve biologically. We are so good at adapting to changing conditions with our knowledge and technology that we may deceive ourselves into believing that we are above nature. But only a fools believes that. Nature always has the last word. A star in our neighborhood could go supernova and wipe out all life in our solar system, and no amount of culture could save us from that. That, I believe, is the main reason you want to seed humanity throughout the galaxy. So as not to have all our eggs in one basket... The chief difference between biological and cultural adaptation is that while biological evolution doesn't care about individuals, cultural evolution does, often at the expense of the species. Look at how many times we've nearly wiped ourselves out through cultural means: the nuclear bomb, pollution, climate change, the Outrage. We can't seem to help ourselves. Look at what we've done: we've made individuals all but immortal, even when it means we can have no more children. In one stroke, we've eliminated the two key ingredients of evolution: offspring and death. From a biological perspective, we're skating on mighty thin ice. ... ...as long as the individual reigns supreme, there's a finite limit to our survival. ... We need a means for the individual, not just the species, to participate in biological evolution, and that's what my project is all about. We need to be able to let our biological bodies die, to have offspring that are molded by the changing needs of the environments we find ourselves in, and yet to serially inhabit these bodies as the same individual. That means we need to be able to move our minds from one body to the next. ... Mine is a singularity in which the obsolete individual is invited to cross over to the new, not simply to die out. The existing person need not die to make room for the newcomer. Anyone can play.